GSOC-2010 Completed Successfully !

By god's grace, I have completed perhaps my first and last GSOC successfully.
The project was : Testsuites for OAR Batch Scheduler

Thanks to my OAR mentor, Mr. Joseph Emeras and Google for giving me such a memorable experience in life.
I am also happy that I could create a good rapport (or indeed a good friendship) with the other OAR GSoc students especially Thiago Presa and Jean Poutcheu.
We helped each other in some critical moments during the course of the programme.

It was a great learning experience during the last 3 months.
The event started with the Community Bonding Period wherein I was asked to play around with the OAR Batch scheduler that managed the Grid5000 (G5K).


I was given an account in the G5K and finally I ended up creating a funtool with a menu interface that provided most of the available usecases of the batch scheduler using the OAR REST APIs.

After some research on Ruby testing frameworks for REST APIs, I finalized on RSpec. RSpec is based on Behaviour Driven Development. Know more about RSPec
There were some changes in ideas and plans after the start of the coding phase.
Finally when the testsuite requirements were clear and feasibility discussed, it didnt take much time for coding.

Lesson to be learnt : Always discuss the feasibility and understand the requirements for any project before you start coding.

Though Kameleon Tool (developed by OAR GSoc-09 student) initially gave me some hiccups during the generation of Debian appliances with OAR Server/Client,
later on it became an integral part of my project. Kameleon is a multipurpose versatile tool that can be used not only for creating VM Images, but also as a parser tool for different purposes. Take a look at Kameleon Wiki

Though Mid Term evaluations went pretty smooth, my teststuites had some incompatibility issues when new version of OAR APIs were rolled out towards the end of the programme.
But all ended well and issues were solved before the final evaluations.
All Details of OAR Testsuites can be seen in my OAR Testsuites Wiki Page.


It was a great summer and I would probably miss all the fun I had in the last few months.
But above and all, I am happy that I am an Open Source Developer for Inriaforge and I would continue giving any contributions the OAR team requires from me.

My advise to all upcoming Gsoc aspirers : Dont wait for the programme to start to get in touch with mentors. Collect and read documentations well before to get a good idea on the project you wish to work on (you may even get additional ideas which is a bonus while making up the proposal) ; give good wholehearted effort in preparing the project proposal because according to me the most challenging aspect of GSoc is to convince the organization and Google that you are indeed a suitable person for the project in hand.

For now, I am waiting for my Google T-Shirt and certificate :) :)
Thanks Google for the big stipend...and all your efforts to promote Open Source...